ex·o·dus a going out; a departure or emigration, usually of a large number of people: the summer exodus to the country and shore. (Source: Dictionary.com)

Have you seen the news about Instagram and the changes which take effect from January 16th? In the revised Terms of Service it states, among other things, that "you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos... and or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you." I certainly don't think that my own photos (mostly snapshots of knitting, clouds and kids) are at much risk of being used as stock photos for someone else, but if they were to sell them for use, under the new terms they wouldn't even have to tell me! The information on my photos (metadata is covered by this clause) could certainly be used by parent company Facebook (which acquired Instagram for £629,000,000 despite it never making a profit) to target advertising at myself and my friends. I am not happy. I do not consent to this.

Unless the terms are revised in the next couple of weeks it'll be a case of deleting my Instagram account and the 900 or so photos I have there to date, which is a huge shame as I have some really lovely contacts there, people I now consider to be friends, and I've really enjoyed being a part of the knitting, crafting IG community. It's also likely that various photos from old blog posts will disappear as some are from Instagram, but I am not sure which. Knitalong photos posted by numerous users could also be lost. It's such a pity, not to mention a massive inconvenience.

I would have happily paid a "Pro" upgrade or small monthly subscription to keep Instagram as it was - it's a shame Facebook didn't offer this as an option when they bought the company. As it is, I foresee that many of us will simply leave.

So what's the alternative? Flickr have recently launched a new iPhone app and so, like numerous friends, I'm starting with that. I have an account which I used with Blogsy until the latter was integrated with Instagram so it's set up and ready to go, although there isn't much there at the moment. If you use Flickr, then my profile is here if you'd like to connect.

I'm really interested to know what you think about this and if you currently use IG, whether this will result in you deleting your account...?

EDIT: Shortly after publishing this post, a message was published by Instagram - you can read it here.

That's a shame indeed - Pinterest revised their terms. It's annoying that there is no consultation with the users. In this instance, a two tier system may have worked here, e.g. free = agree with the terms, "pro" = ability to opt out.

I've been with Flickr for 7yrs. They were originally intended to be what Instagram is now, a social website, but people mainly used them as storage. I'm going to be giving the Flickr app a good go, not because of the change in policy, but because the flickr app (imo) is better. It uploads the pictures in high res (unless you ask it not to) you can upload on mass from a PC (as well as use it via a PC without the app), set different privacy to each photo should you wish to, use sets, groups, tags...I love it so far. The only thing keeping everyone to Instagram is a fear of change and fear of losing touch with people, but the crafting community on Flickr is a lot bigger than people think.

I think you are absolutely spot on. As soon as I had a look at the app, I upgraded to Flickr Pro (initially for 3 month as a trial period) the App looks really good and there is more flexibility. Perhaps Instagram will have made people more ready for using Flickr the way it was intended? Some things are a little before their time, if that makes sense - this could be the case here. The App will certainly help, I'm sure.

Tbh flickr is where I back up all my photos, there is an uploader you can set up on your PC that allows you to upload loads of photos all in one go. I have 1145 PAGES of photos (not sure how many photos that equates to, but it's a lot) so I've always been a Pro customer. I have to admit, I love instagram, but flickr doing an app makes life so much easier for me because all I've been doing is sharing everything with flickr anyway so my picture was backed up somewhere, but I hated that it was saving a low res picture (because instagram only deals with low res), I like to have the option of high resolution.

I kind of hope everyone does switch to flickr, but no doubt they won't...it's google+ all over again.

I didn't know about the flickr app, thanks for the link! Like you, I don't imagine that anyone will buy my pictures, they're not that exciting, but the metadata thing really put me off.

I'm reserving judgement until the changes take effect, as facebook tried the same thing a while back, and then backed down to a compromise after the backlash. Can't say I'm surprised they're trying again though.

if instagram goes through with it, I'm with you. I'll leave. I have a flickr account, too, but I never got too attached to it because I had a hard time linking to my own pictures-- I never bothered to figure out the settings properly, probably. In any case, I agree with the poster above, like a number of companies before them, my guess is that if the response is loud and negative enough, they'll reconsider and revise.

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